"The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate."
It was out of this window in the kitchen that she saw the horse and its rider coming down the road, and recognized the young man to whom she was betrothed. It was out of this window in the porch that she saw them again, as she went to the door to welcome her lover. It was this door she opened, to find no trace of horse or rider. It was to this little room at the other end of the kitchen that she went, bewildered and terrified, to waken her sister, who tried in vain to pacify her by saying she had been dreaming by the fire, when she should have been in bed. And it was in this room she received the letter many days later telling her of the death of her lover in a distant city at the hour of her vision.[1] Mr. Whittier told such stories with the air of more than half belief in their truth, especially in his later years, when he became interested in the researches of scientists in the realm of telepathy. He said his aunt was the most truthful of women, and she never doubted the reality of her vision.
WESTERN END OF KITCHEN
View of "mother's room;" the poet was born in a room at the left, beyond the fireplace
Copyright 1891, by A. A. Ordway
The door at the southwestern corner of the kitchen opens into the room in which the poet was born. This was the parlor, but as the Friends were much given to hospitality, it was often needed as a bedroom, and there was in it a bedstead that could be lifted from the floor and supported by a hook in the ceiling when not in use. In the corners are cabinets containing articles of use and ornament that are genuine relics of the Whittier family. The inlaid mahogany card-table between the front windows was brought to this house just a century ago (1804) by Abigail Hussey, the bride of John Whittier, and placed where it now stands. Like the desk in the kitchen, it has always been in the possession of the family, and was restored to the birthplace by the niece to whom Whittier gave it. In this room are several books that belonged in the small library of Whittier's father, which are mentioned in "Snow-Bound," and described more fully in the rhymed catalogue, a part of which appears in "Life and Letters," p. 46. I here give the full list copied from Whittier's manuscript, for which I am indebted to Miss Sarah S. Thayer, daughter of Abijah W. Thayer, who edited the "Haverhill Gazette," and with whom Whittier boarded while in the Academy. Mr. Thayer had appended to the manuscript these words: "This was deposited in my hands about 1828, by John G. Whittier, who assured me that it was his first effort at versification. It was written in 1823 or 1824, when Whittier was fifteen or sixteen years old."
NARRATIVES
How Captain Riley and his crew
Were on Sahara's desert threw.
How Rollins to obtain the cash
Wrote a dull history of trash.
O'er Bruce's travels I have pored,
Who the sources of the Nile explored.
Malcolm of Salem's narrative beside,
Who lost his ship's crew, unless belied.
How David Foss, poor man, was thrown
Upon an island all alone.
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